Another Country: Style 1 key example

Baldwin's syntax tends to be long and full of clauses, as if each sentence tries to pack in as many thoughts as possible. The pacing of the novel can feel absolutely relentless, as it’s so jam-packed with emotionally intense conversations and anxiety spirals. It’s also constantly barraging the reader with dramatic events. These include sexual assault, physical and sexual abuse, racialized violence, and, crucially to the novel’s symbolism and sense of tragedy, Rufus’s suicide.

Baldwin uses simile heavily to layer observations. His imagery and use of descriptive language also give the reader a sense of everything being claustrophobically connected. Things are so often “like” other things in Another Country that they all seem to be part of the same New York organism. The narrator focuses intently on the thought processes of characters, giving the reader highly detailed perspectives on their experiences. The fact that different characters have differing perceptions of the same events illustrates both the divides and connections among the novel’s cultural and racial groups.

The novel is also full of allusions to mid-20th-century jazz and blues music. Like blues music, the novel reflects on the experiences and injustices of life for Black Americans in New York City and the American South. The relationships that Baldwin’s characters find themselves in—forcing them to be nimble and to improvise—mirrors the unpredictable dynamics of jazz music. There’s also an underlying hum of Baldwin’s constant auditory imagery of the city. Another Country is full of the sounds of clubs, cars, the subways, and the street, as Baldwin integrates these sounds into the fabric of the novel.